Software : Instagram denies losing 25 per cent of users

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Instagram denies losing 25 per cent of users Posted: Instagram has rubbished reports claiming a quarter of its user base have abandoned the service. Figures from AppData painted a picture of a sharp drop-off in daily active users of the Facebook-owned photo sharing app over the festive period, down from 16.4m on December 18 to 12.4m on Christmas Day. The data prompted a sensationalist report in the New York Post in which an AppData spokesperson attributed the drop to the recent terms of service controversy causing users to abandon ship. However, Instagram has dismissed the report and the data. A spokesperson told Gizmodo: "This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram." Bad data? AppData gains its stats by charting usage through Facebook Connect logins rather than Instagram logins, so it's difficult to take those figures at face value. Also, as The Next Web pointed out, most of the other popular Facebook-connected apps like Spotify, Farmville 2, Pinterest and Zoost also saw sharp drop offs over the festive period, according to AppData. There was no outrage surrounding terms of service or anything else for those products, so it seems AppData was wide of the mark, or Facebook made some background changes which affected the logging. Unfortunately for Facebook, the report caused its stock to drop half a per cent on Friday.

Snapchat and Facebook Poke 'security hole' allows recipients to keep videos Posted: Those folks (not us, honestly) sending risque videos through the Facebook Poke and Snapchat apps can be comfortable in the knowledge that anything they send self destructs 10 seconds after it is viewed. Or can they? Buzzfeed has uncovered a quite simple method for recipients of naughty messages to keep ahold of those potentially compromising clips to view and share with others as many times as they see fit. The key, according to the blog, is not to open the video once it is received. Because the file is stored locally, it can be easily accessed by plugging the iPhone into a computer and using file browsing software like iFunBox to examine the contents of the phone. No warning At this point Snapchat users can locate the file by navigating to the Snapchat folder and finding the "tmp" file. Facebook Poke users can browser to library/caches/fbstore/mediacard to find the videos, and from there they can be copied to the desktop and kept. Both Poke and Snapchat alert the sender if the recipient attempts to take a screenshot of the picture or video before it disappears, but this method offers no such warning. Facebook fix incoming Facebook now says it is working on a fix for the bug and told Buzzfeed: "Thanks for reaching out, and we are addressing this issue now. We should have a fix pushed shortly." The company also encouraged Pokers to use the service responsibly and understand the risks. Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel brushed off the concerns and said people will always find way to 'reverse engineer' technology, but those people are in the minority. He said: "The people who most enjoy using Snapchat are those who embrace the spirit and intent of the service. There will always be ways to reverse engineer technology products - but that spoils the fun!"

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